BASEBALL CARDS SPECIAL REPORT PART III: Sports cards evolving in effort to lure next generation of collectors

Mark Rogers did it backward. He didn't get his son interested in sports card collecting. His son got him interested.

Almost 20 years later, Rogers still has the bug. On a cloudless afternoon in early June, the 58-year-old Encinitas resident was in Ardillo's Sports Cards and Games in Oceanside, excitedly quizzing owner Chuck Ardillo about the latest releases on the market before settling on a box of Panini Threads NBA basketball cards.

His son? Sean Rogers, now 31, still collects, but he long ago left behind sports cards for a fantasy card game called Magic: The Gathering.

"He and all his friends transitioned over," Mark Rogers said. "It's more than just collecting; you play. He plays with friends who are serious collectors and serious competitors.

"Magic is amazing. The cards are gorgeous."

This is the problem that the sports card industry ---- once a $1.2 billion business, now a fraction of that ---- faces in 2011. How can it keep people like Sean Rogers from walking away? And how can it attract the next generation of Sean Rogerses when there are so many things vying for kids' attention?

"The question now is," said Dave Jamieson, the author of a book on the history of baseball cards, "can simple cardboard still resonate with kids the way it did for 100 years? Or do the card companies really need to carry this into the digital age?"

Mindful of its rich history but also confronting a tenuous future, the 60-year-old Topps Company is trying to cover all its bases. Taking full advantage of its status as the exclusive licensee of Major League Baseball, Topps this year will release 20 different baseball products. Among them are plenty of examples of simple cardboard, including the popular Bowman brand that was resurrected in 1989, an Allen and Ginter set that's designed to look like old tobacco cards, and an Opening Day line that's priced at 99 cents per pack and is intended as an entry product for children who have only small allowances to spend.

However, since former Disney chief Michael Eisner led a group of investors that bought the company in 2007, Topps also has zoomed full speed into the digital age. Two years ago, it introduced Topps Attax, a game that has been described as a cross between collecting and fantasy sports. Kids buy Attax baseball (or football) cards, register them online, and manipulate them ---- fantasy style ---- in games against their friends.

"I'm a big fan of it," said Evan Kaplan, the director of licensing and business development for the Major League Baseball Players Association. "It's taking elements of Pokemon with a trading card element. The product may be a little different than what I collected as a kid, but this is what today's children are used to and looking for. I think it's important as our consumers age to bring more kids into the category. Otherwise, we'll be obsolete."

Mark Sapir, Topps' vice president for sports, said the Attax brand has been particularly popular in Europe, where the company has a partnership with the English Premier League for soccer.

"In the U.S., it hasn't been as big," Sapir said. "But it's been a nice addition for our business and a nice way to bring kids into our portfolio."

Topps must be on to something, because its virtual world called ToppsTown ---- which includes Attax among other games ---- spawned a couple of imitators. Rival Panini America (formerly Donruss) offers a version named Panini Adrenalyn that gives kids the opportunity to play online games after buying special NFL, NBA or NHL cards. And Carlsbad-based Upper Deck created a website called UpperDeckU.com that was later shut down because of the loss of the MLB license and low usership.

Upper Deck instead has turned its focus to another way to draw in kids, releasing video cards in April that were inserted into its 2011 football sets. Branded "Evolution," the cards are the same height (3 1/2 inches) and width (2 1/2 inches) as regular trading cards, but they're about a half-inch thick, with a tiny video monitor that plays 60 seconds of footage of NFL stars Adrian Peterson, Tony Romo, DeSean Jackson and Patrick Willis.

Because Upper Deck lost its NFL license last year, though, the cards picture the players in their college uniforms. Upper Deck has an exclusive license with the Collegiate Licensing Company.

"It's really the first major innovation in several years," said Jason Masherah, Upper Deck's vice president of marketing and new business development. "We wanted to try to catch the industry up with the digital environment around us. Kids have cell phones, Game Boys, constant Facebook. You look at cards, and they've been flat, printed material for 100-plus years now. We wanted to try to be relevant with kids today."

How much longer Upper Deck will be relevant has been a source of considerable speculation since MLB cast its lot with Topps in 2009. Rumors were particularly rampant after the New York Times reported last year that the players union told agents in an email that the company was experiencing financial difficulty and had not paid a large number of players money it owed them. That story came soon after Upper Deck paid an undisclosed amount to settle a trademark infringement lawsuit filed by Major League Baseball Properties.

Masherah said reports of Upper Deck's demise are premature.

"By the rumblings on the Internet, we've been going out of business for three years now," he said. "We're still here. We're moving into a new building (two miles away from the current offices). It's business as usual for us. We're very excited about the partners and licenses we have, and we don't plan on going anywhere."

Topps' baseball card monopoly ---- the same status it enjoyed from 1956 until 1981 ---- has been a boon for the company long synonymous with the slice of Americana. It didn't hurt, of course, that the awarding of the exclusive license coincided with consecutive years in which a ballyhooed rookie ---- Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg in 2010 and Nationals slugger Bryce Harper this year ---- hit the market, driving sales for the rest of the business. Sapir said the performance of the Bowman brand featuring Harper has been "exceptionally strong."

Topps also has heavily advertised its diamond anniversary with a promotion involving codes inserted in packs of cards that can be unlocked on the Internet for a chance to win vintage cards from the company's history, special diamond-embedded cards or even a diamond ring.

"It's a cool way to connect our physical products to a digital component and encourage collecting and community online," Sapir said.

The consensus of industry observers is that the winnowing of the market to a single manufacturer was necessary for the hobby to halt its long downward spiral.

"Generally, we're big proponents of competition, but I think this business has benefited ---- in the short term, at least ---- from having just Topps at the helm of baseball cards," Kaplan said. "We've greatly reduced the number of products, so that simplifies it for the consumer. If you weren't a well-educated consumer, it became too much of a burden to figure out what was the right thing to buy, how you were going to collect. It's definitely been the right decision."

The business has stabilized, but it's hard to find anyone who believes that the heyday of the late 1980s and early 1990s can be recaptured. Some wonder whether there's a future for rectangular pieces of cardboard, or even their digital doppelgangers, in a society dominated by Xbox and Facebook.

Back at Ardillo's Cards on Coast Highway, Chuck Ardillo sat behind the counter of his small shop with his friend, Nam To. A Vietnamese immigrant, To used to purchase cards from Ardillo at the Oceanside swap meet, when he was 12 years old. He quit collecting five years ago and now sells his cards ---- or tries to, anyway ---- at the same spot where he bought back in the '80s.

"I have a lot of worthless stuff," To said.

Ardillo, an Italian with a full head of gray hair, discovered baseball cards late in life, through his grandchildren. He stuck with it long after they drifted away, opening the store 20 years ago. He started it as a sports store, but admits that he wouldn't be able to stay in business without fantasy cards.

Ardillo is 77 now. He figures he has another four years left in him and, after that, the store will probably die, joining the graveyard of similar enterprises across the county and the nation. Asked if any of his kids or grandkids want to take over the shop, Ardillo shook his head.